The Shadow Woman (14 page)

It smelled of bread and burnt flour from the Pååls baking factory a bit farther on. Feeling sick to his stomach at the enveloping aroma, he set his foot down on the asphalt and silently tapped a rhythm.

When a man emerged from the building and walked down the half flight of steps to the parking lot, Bergenhem climbed out of the car. The man walked the twenty paces up to him. Bergenhem took off his sunglasses, and the man’s face brightened up along with everything else around him. The smell of bread returned. It got stuck between his fingers. Bergenhem reached out, and they shook hands. The man’s name was Peter von Holten. He was a few years older than Bergenhem—maybe a bit over thirty, with sharp features, but it may have been the light.

“I’m the one who called,” Bergenhem said.

“Shall we take a little drive?”

Von Holten had insisted that he not be visited at his job. Bergenhem had assured him that was okay. Sometimes they could be accommodating.

“There’s a little park over by the Pripps brewery,” von Holten said.

They drove south and pulled over next to a big bush at the side of the road. They sat on a bench. Now it smelled of beer from the brewery, and Bergenhem wasn’t sure which was worse.

He suddenly longed for the scent of his four-month-old daughter.

“So you haven’t reported your car missing,” Bergenhem said.

“Who could have imagined this? That my car would end up in the middle of a murder investigation?”

“What was it doing there? Why did you put it there, I mean.”

“It was a mistake,” von Holten said, “and I can explain. But it’s a—humph—it’s a little delicate.”

Bergenhem waited for him to continue. A dozen seagulls passed close above their heads, staggering in loose formation as if they’d been intoxicated by the beer-filled gusts of wind.

“I’m just surprised as hell that the car is still there,” von Holten said. “That wasn’t the idea.”

Bergenhem nodded and waited.

“Here’s the thing. There’s this girl that I meet up with sometimes, and the night before last we went out to the lake because it’s a nice place to be on a warm summer evening. And then afterward . . . we decided that she would take the car.” Von Holten rubbed his mouth and then removed his hand. “I’m married,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“So your girl was supposed to take the car? Do I have that right?”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“Is that necessary?”

“Her name? Of course.”

Von Holten said a name, and Bergenhem wrote it down in the notepad he’d brought with him from the car.

“Where does she live?”

Von Holten stated an address. “She lives alone.”

“How did you get back from there yourself?”

“I walked.”

“Along the highway?”

“There are walking paths back into town. And I don’t live far from Delsjö Lake. Takes about an hour and a half by foot.”

“I know. But why was she supposed to take the car?”

“We do that sometimes. She doesn’t have a car and, well, I have another one, and this one’s a company car that my wife doesn’t keep track of.”

“But she didn’t take the car?” Bergenhem said.

“This is fucking insane.”

“Why? Surely you’ve spoken to her.”

“That’s just it,” von Holten said. “I haven’t managed to get hold of her these past few days. Nobody picks up, and I went over there and left a message in her mail slot, but she hasn’t—”

“What does she look like?” Bergenhem felt his blood beginning to pound between his temples. “What does”—he looked in his notebook—“Andrea look like?”

“Brown hair, pretty dark, normal features, I guess. Attractive, of course, I think, but it’s difficult to describe someone. Maybe five and a half feet tall.” Von Holten looked at Bergenhem. “You don’t mean to say you think that . . .”

“What?” Bergenhem asked.

“That Andrea is the one who . . . who died out there?”

“Why didn’t you come forward with this information before?”

Von Holten started to cry. He rubbed his mouth again and squeezed his eyes shut. “It can’t have anything to do with her,” he said with his eyes still closed.

“You must have read the news or seen it on TV.”

Von Holten opened his eyes and directed his gaze at the trees or the seagulls whose mocking laughter Bergenhem could hear above and behind them.

“I guess I didn’t really want to take it in, or think about it. I have a family and they mean a lot to me.”

Bergenhem said nothing.

“I know what you’re thinking. But you’ve got to think about what you’re doing at a time like this.”

You’ve got to think about what you’re doing before you drop your pants with a stranger, thought Bergenhem. “That’s right,” he said. “Think about what you’re doing.”

“It was wrong,” von Holten said with a weary voice. “Of course I . . . I would have come forward, but I thought that sh—that Andrea would be getting in touch. There’s another explanation, or something else that caused me to wait. I wasn’t expecting to hear from her for a while, and I had no way of knowing that the car was still down by the lake.”

“Was she going to borrow it for an extended period?”

“She was going to make a trip down south and be away for a few days. Maybe that’s just what she’s done, come to think of it,” von Holten said, with a face that brightened.

“Only not in your car,” Bergenhem said. “Your car’s still there.”

“Sweet Jesus.”

 

In Winter’s office they showed the photographs to von Holten, and he threw up over Winter’s desk. Winter grabbed the photos before they were hit by the witness’s stomach contents.

“Go get a bucket and a cleaning rag,” he said to Bergenhem.

The lover threw up again behind Winter’s back as he poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the cabinet. His blazer was hung up safe and sound. He returned to the desk and held out the glass to von Holten. Then Bergenhem returned and the two of them calmly wiped up some of the spew that had run over the desk. Meanwhile, the witness pulled himself together. The stench remained, but nobody thought about it after a while.

“What awful images,” von Holten said.

“Do you recognize this face,” Winter said.

“No,” von Holten said, and averted his eyes from the photograph that Winter was holding in front of him. “That was the most awf—How can anyone recognize a face like that? It’s not . . . it’s not human.”

“It’s a dead human being,” Winter said. “It’s the face of a dead woman.”

“I don’t think it’s Andrea,” von Holten said.

“Are you absolutely sure about that?”

“Sure about what?” Von Holten looked like he was about to be sick again.

They waited.

Von Holten closed his eyes. Suddenly he threw up again, into the bucket that Bergenhem had set on the floor. Most of it ended up in the bucket. “I’m not sure of anything,” he said with heavy tears in his eyes. “Do you have a towel?”

Bergenhem had fetched a towel and handed it to him.

Von Holten wiped himself across the mouth. “I don’t think that’s her, but who can tell for sure? I don’t know what to say.”

“Did Andrea Maltzer have any distinguishing marks?” Winter asked. “Birthmarks, scars—like from an accident.”

“Not that I know of. Is that something I ought to know?”

“We would like you to come with us and take a look at her,” Winter said as gently as he could. “It’s important, as I’m sure you can understand.”

“Do I have to?”

“I’m afraid so,” Winter said.

“Can I wash myself off?”

Winter nodded toward Bergenhem, who accompanied von Holten to the toilet.

 

The light was blue. Even the white was blue. The skin of Winter’s body drew taut from the cold in there, and his sweat froze into a crust on his skin. He ought to have been cold on the inside too, but he wasn’t.

There was a clattering as gurneys with dead people were pushed to and fro in the corridors outside. There were more dead people here than living. This antechamber to the burial grounds was a place where the dead lay but had no peace. They waited.

Helene’s face glowed mutedly beneath the fluorescent tubes in a hue that had no equivalent in the world of the living. Von Holten had shook when they rolled out the gurney, teeth chattering as if he had turned to ice.

Winter looked at him now, not at the murder victim. Von Holten looked down and his face changed. He suddenly appeared happy, a movement in his face that was impossible to hide. Winter could see that he tried, but there was no way.

“It’s not her,” he said.

“No?”

Bergenhem gazed at Winter, who gazed back.

“I’m absolutely sure that’s not her,” von Holten said.

Winter eyed the woman’s face. The stark white light from the ceiling kept shadows away from her. This was exactly what a person looked like who had neither a name nor a past. Maybe a future, he thought. It all depends on me—whether we track down her future within a reasonable period of time. She could lie here for a year or she could get a decent burial. God, how I hate this room.

 

Outside, the frozen film melted away in the sun, and Winter’s skin became supple and moist again. The effect caused the whites of von Holten’s eyes to become bloodshot, like he’d just been punched hard in the face.

“We need to know everything there is to know about your mistress,” Winter said. “Andrea Maltzer.”

“Does my wife have to know about this? About Andrea?”

Winter didn’t answer. He drove in toward town and stopped at a red light.

“I’ll give you my full cooperation,” von Holten said. “I’ll do anything you ask.”

“Tell us what you know, then,” Winter said.

“What a fucking piece of work,” Ringmar said.

“One among thousands.”

“Man is a weak vessel.”

“So now we have a disappearance connected to the murder,” Winter said. They were sitting in Ringmar’s office, drinking black coffee that scalded the mouth.

“Could she have seen something?”

“Could she have seen
it
?”

“Could she have surprised someone?”

“Could she have sat there in the car, thinking about her future?”

“Would someone have turned into the parking lot if there was someone sitting there in a car?”

“Would they have been able to tell?”

“Could she have tried to drive off but been too afraid?”

“Could she have gotten curious?”

“Could she have been assaulted?”

“Could she have been abducted?”

“Could she be involved?”

“Could she be guilty?”

“Could she have taken the first bus in the morning?”

“Could she have had other reasons for not taking the car?”

“Could she really be who she is?”

“Could she just be a fabrication by that von Holten character, you mean?”

“Can we find that out within half an hour?”

“Yes,” Winter said. “And it’s already done. There is an Andrea Maltzer at the address that von Holten gave us, and there is a telephone number and nobody answers when you call. Or opens the door when you knock. Börjesson went by there and knocked.”

“We’re going in then, right?”

“I’d like to wait until tomorrow, if she hasn’t gotten in touch, that is.”

“What for?”

“There’s something that doesn’t add up here.”

“You can say that again.”

“She doesn’t fit in,” Winter said. “We have to concentrate.”

“What do we call what you’re talking about? Nonwishful thinking?”

“I’ll read through everything again,” Winter said. “She’ll get in touch tomorrow at the latest.”

“What makes you so sure about that?”

Winter didn’t answer. His gaze moved from the paper in front of him to Ringmar. “Have we finished running the fingerprints from von Holten’s car yet?”

“No. Quite a few people used it. It was his company car, and he lent it to others as well.”

“Other women?”

“That’s not what he says,” Ringmar said. “Other people. Work related.”

FROM WHERE SHE WAS LYING, THE WORLD SEEMED FAR AWAY
through the tinted windows. The day looked the same from early morning till nightfall, but the evening came more quickly now, and for half an hour the grayness lifted, and before it turned black outside, the sinking light sliced into her room and blazed on the wall. For just a short moment it flared up and then disappeared into the wallpaper without a trace. In that sense they were beautiful evenings. Aneta Djanali started to feel whole again. The long periods of languor became fewer, the hours when she’d sort of drift in and out of dreams. She began to long for voices. She listened to the orderly who spoke an exciting mixed language.

 

She sat in bed and Winter sat next to her. She pointed at the wall and mumbled.